Want to see your Original sprites on the X-Box Live Arcade?

My Name is Jon and I am with Studio 534 which is a small independent game development firm.

We are currently working on a nostalgic new RPG type game for the X-box Live Arcade in the 2D pixel-art style and are looking for talented artists to help us out with the project! We are very impressed with the work we have encountered here on Smogon both in sprite making as well as concepts, and we could really use imaginative and talented individuals such as yourselves to make our vision come alive.

The main role we are looking to fill at this time is in creature creation. Both spriters and concept artists are welcome and if you can do both then that is even better. Some of the original work we have created can be found below and I will be posting a more detailed description of the game soon for those who are interested.

I promised I would post some additional information about the game and the project!

The premise of the game (and this should be kept in mind if/when you create sprites) is that humans are expanding into space and colonizing remote planets. Scientists are working tirelessly to create animals and plantlife that are better suited for the new alien environments. This means that we are looking for alien/strange/unique looking creatures that are based on existing earth animals.

(We are not looking for plant based creatures like some of the ones you might find in Poke'mon. No walking sunflowers or palm trees. All of our creatures are animal based in accordance with the premise of the game.)

We do not have the man power to create all of the creatures we would like and so we were hoping to round up some talented and motivated sprite designers here. Serious interest only, please.

The specifications for the sprites are listed below.

>> Restricted to 100x100 pixels
>>Must have access to either Paint.Net or Photoshop

(We will be requiring either .pdn or .psd files sent to us once the sprite is selected) Paint.Net is a great free program for pixel art like we are looking for. It can be downloaded here: ( http://www.getpaint.net/download.html#download )

>>Sprites MUST be your own ORIGINAL work. We DO NOT want recycled/spliced together pokemon sprites.

**NOTE**
WE RESERVE THE RIGHT TO MAKE ALTERATIONS TO ANY SUBMITTED SPRITES SO THAT THEY BETTER FIT OUR PURPOSES. YOU WILL STILL RECEIVE CREDIT.

>>We are looking for two stages of each creature (Baby and Adult)

>> If your sprite is chosen we may ask for a back view as well (the dimensions for this will be provided at a later time, at this point we want to focus on the front views.

>>Make the adult forms as epic as you would like.

>>THESE ARE THE ELEMENTAL TYPES YOU SHOULD BE DESIGNING FOR:

------------Water

------------Ice

------------Fire

------------Solar

------------Shadow

------------Metal

------------Atomic

------------Earth

------------Electric

*** if you have any questions concerning what these mean then please le us know.

I know making a sprite is tough work and all the details and such that go into it and that that takes alot of time. I was thinking though that since our creatures are all going to be visible in the overworld that we are going to need to make overworld sprites for all of them! This is something that I was just going to do but I figured some of you might actually be able to find time to make some of these tiny little guys.

We would need 3 views: FRONT - BACK - SIDE

Overworld Sprite Sizes:Adult: 32x32 (pixels)Juvenile: 20x20 (pixels)

***These are not the final versions of these sprites all have yet to go through Quality Control. Sprites that may not be added yet have yet to reach the QC stage.

Do the spriters/artists have the right or right to name the creatures?

Have you already consulted with Microsoft on getting this into the Arcade?

Do you need any help with something besides sprites? Say, coding or animation?

Since this is going to get some royalties being on the Arcade and everything, will the artists get any of this?

I'm super interested in this project. I may contribute to it.

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Okay let me start @ the top and work my way down...

> The games name:The game's working title is Gliese534e (not finalized yet). It's the name of the planet on which the scientific colony is located in the game and it is an adaptation of the name of an actual cluster of planets that have been found to have earth like qualities.

>Right to name creatures: A tentative 'Yes'. If you would like to give a crack @ naming the creatures you create we will definitely accept your input on the matter. I wont promise that these names will be final or that we may not change/tweak them, but if they are good names then there would not be any reason for us to do so.

>Consulting Microsoft: We have not contacted Microsoft though we have done research into placing games on the Arcade. You must simply buy a $100 developers package and then you can place your game on the arcade.

>Extra help: At this time we do not require any additional help beyond creature creation. We have a team of programmers who have already completed a larger portion of the game's coding and a small team of artists are already hard @ work on environments and character development. The scope of the creature creation is just too vast for our small team to handle @ this time. If you have a specific portion you want to help with you can let me know and I will consider it.

>Compensation: The following notice appeared in our original group and I regret that I accidentally left it out of this posting:

"**NOTE**
THERE IS NO PAY INVOLVED WITH YOUR PARTICIPATION NOR WILL YOU HAVE ANY SAY OR CONTROL IN ANY ASPECT OF THE GAME. IF YOUR SPRITES ARE CHOSEN YOUR NAME WILL BE LISTED IN THE GAME'S CREDITS AND STUDIO534 WOULD BE HAPPY TO BE LISTED AS REFERENCES OR ON RESUMES."

I hope that answers your questions and that we will hear from you soon!

If all of the above questions are answered, then I would love to participate! I could do designing or spriting, whichever you'd like.

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> Both would be amazing! Most of the spriters we have working for us currently prefer to create their own creatures and then sprite them. It works out a lot like the CAP competition except people have the opportunity to see their ideas through to the end.

(as a note: do to the nature of the CAP competition A LOT of great concepts go to waste during every round. We would like to invite those artists to donate their concepts so that they may see them brought to fruition if they would so like)

Since people were asking about concepts I wanted to post a list that we have created of the creatures we have as inspiration in each type. The animals with (x)'s next to them have already been created. This list also only shows some of the creatures we would like to see, feel free to think of others and to switch around types a bit if you would like. We hope to have 9 creatures of each type by the end!

(We are not looking for plant based creatures like some of the ones you might find in Poke'mon. No walking sunflowers or palm trees. All of our creatures are animal based in accordance with the premise of the game.)

How did i not notice that? Lulz anyway here's a few Ive made:
Frilled lizard, vampire squid and leather back turtle
They're made in paint.net. and .png since I couldnt seem to save it as .pdn or.psd
Sorry bout that

How did i not notice that? Lulz anyway here's a few Ive made:
Frilled lizard, vampire squid and leather back turtle
They're made in paint.net. and .png since I couldnt seem to save it as .pdn or.psd
Sorry bout that

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I really like the concepts you have going here! A couple things

>.pdn & .psd are the file extensions asscoiated with Paint.NET and Photoshop files respectively. These file types allow us to retain quality (no compression) and preserve any alpha transparency that may have been used. If you cannot use one of these programs (Paint.NET is free and can be found at the link posted in a previous post of mine.) then you MUST provide us with a .png image of your sprite.

> I really like what you have done so far with the frilled lizard and squid! The only real issue I have with them is that the frilled lizards and the baby vampire squid seems kind of small... if you wouldnt mind redoing them scaled up a bit i would appreciate it! (Adults should utilize most/all of the 100x100 box and babies should end up a bit bigger than you have done them here so that we can show appropriate detail

Baby penguin, I'll make the adult one later. Mind telling how to upload images in PDN format?

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>The PDN files will need to be sent to our email address (studio534@yahoo.com) when the sprite has been finalized!

>I like what you have started here. It really remainds me of an old school red/blue type sprite. Feel free to use as many colors as you would like, dont feel restriced! Also we are going for a slightly more realistic-ish look so maybe make the eyes black and the bill a different color too (goes back to more color I guess, lol)

Seeing as you said it could be in PNG as well, I obliged with the updated sprite. Shall I send it now?

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Looks good! You can send that to our email (studio534@yahoo.com) if you would like! Also if you would include the name you would like to be credit under in the credits of the game that would be great too!

ALSO! If you wanted to add a name suggestion for the creature (names apply to both baby and adult versions they are not unique for each form) you can include that as well!

Well I made a Fire Lion Cub just to see how it would go, and if I would want to keep making art for this project, and I had a lot of fun, so I'll probably try again later, Im a little bit pressed for time lately but hopefully I'll have the Adult one in by the end of the week.

Well I made a Fire Lion Cub just to see how it would go, and if I would want to keep making art for this project, and I had a lot of fun, so I'll probably try again later, Im a little bit pressed for time lately but hopefully I'll have the Adult one in by the end of the week.

Quagsire... That shading is extremely flat. Nothing in real life would have no tones differ except for the very very top and very very bottom bit. Also, is it covered in ropes or something? And why doesn't it have toes on it's back feet?